Kitchen

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Yuichi Tanabe — Son of Eriko Tanabe. Main character. His mother died of cancer when Yuichi was a very young child. He lives with his loving transgender mother and supports Mikage in her time of grieving. He eventually loses his mother, and relies on emotional support from Mikage. One day, Eriko is gracefully watering the plants and telling Mikage about the time when Yuichi’s biological mother died. Eriko tells Mikage that life can be very hard, but those who never suffer can never understand joy. Mikage is comforted by Eriko’s words and thinks to herself that she’ll experience many moments of pain in her life but knows that she’ll keep going and won’t let her spirit be broken.

Yosimoto es minuciosa en el tratamiento de temas escabrosos y delicados (muerte, soledad, familia, sexo…) y lo hace de manera natural, sencilla, nada soez. Y, aunque su visión es realmente pesimista, parece que al final deja un rayo de luz para la redención.I thoroughly agree with her and that magical quality transforms what could have been a rather banal book into a great one. From this cultural archetype, the readers may understand Banana’s intentions when she placed two stories in her book (the stories of Mikage-Yuichi and Satsuki-Hitoshi), which is formally in three parts (Part I includes Kitchen and Full Moon, while part II is Moonlight Shadow). The three short stories are about a grandmother who dies because of her old age, a mother who dies due to a crazy man with an obsession, and a lover who dies due to a traffic accident. Instead of making the reader feel sympathetic to the survivors of these losses, these details lead to the impression that these people live on with their own situations. From a comparative perspective, we can view this as if it is an interior power of a hybrid narrative that is dominated by the impermanence of life. That night, Yuichi drunkenly asks Mikage to stay for a while, and she asks him to explain if he needs her as a friend or a lover. Yuichi becomes despondent, saying he can’t think straight. Mikage discovers that Yuichi has been drinking himself to sleep every night and is in a dark place. Mikage imagines her and Yuichi climbing down a ladder to hell and realizes they can’t create a life together in this place of pain. Books are filled with girls on their own forced to make their own way in the world. Often it involves slippery tactics or compromises. Do you see these elements in Mikage? As lonely as she can be at times, is her very survival threatened? What is her economic position? How has Eriko provided a valid, if entertaining, role model?

Researching early 20 th-century Japanese writers such as Hayashi Fumiko (1903–1951) and Miyamoto Yuriko (1899–1951), Donald Keene wrote, “The women writers of the 1930s and later, though strikingly different in their interests and modes of expression, shared many frustrations. Regardless of the nature of their books, these women were often known more for their love life than for their criticisms of society or the beauty of their prose styles” (Keene, 1987, p. 1114). To Banana, this statement is no longer true. While Banana still tells compelling love stories, social problems in her hybrid writing have brought a new face to Japanese women’s literature.Mikage becomes rooted in the kitchen. It becomes her compass by which she compares all homes that she has ever entered. Upon arriving, she takes over cooking for Yuichi and his mother Eriko, a transvestite who runs an all night club. Both lead busy lives and emit positive energy, encouraging Mikage to engage in her newfound passion of cooking. The three make up a new family unit until Mikage can recover from all the death around her. We’ve all had that ‘what if?’ thought. Perhaps it’s about a missed job opportunity or a potential partner we never had the courage to ask out. These are big things that slip through our fingers. We sometimes wish away a bad day at work, only to then be faced with the realisation that this day is one of a finite number we have. I realized that the world did not exist for my benefit,’ Eriko tells Mikage, ‘ It followed that the ratio of pleasant and unpleasant things around me would not change. It wasn't up to me.’ Life will always be hard, but finding love and happiness must still go on and we must always get up and keep going. ‘ Why is it we have so little choice? We live like the lowliest worms. Always defeated - defeated we make dinner, we eat, we sleep. Everyone we love is dying. Sill, to cease living is unacceptable.’

Kitchen shines brightest as an elucidation of the awful transience of life in its every facet. So much of what we do slips through our fingers without us ever being aware of it. Telkens als ik met hem had afgesproken gebeurde hetzelfde: dan werd ik verdrietig omdat ik was wie ik was She turns to her kitchen. But she is also invited to live with the family of a young man she has known since childhood. Now here’s a modern family: just two people, the young man and his mother. But did I tell you his father is his mother? Or, to phrase that more correctly, his mother is his father? It’s a transgender situation. The two young people are drawn to each other but then he is hit by loss. They grapple with trying to help each other, maybe love each other, or maybe just pity each other, and try to stop each other from jumping over the edge. Oniki Y (1996) A brief overview of J-Pop fiction. http://jpop.com/feature/02jfiction/yoshimoto/html. Accessed 8 Jan 2022In the first part of Kitchen an orphan needs to leave her home. She is taken in by a boy and his trans parent, who works in clubs and bars. Loneliness and loss play major parts, and overall I got strong Tokyo Godfather vibes, in the sense that Banana Yoshimoto presents us a story of outcasts bonding together in a rather inhospitable, normative world. Later, Eriko asks Mikage to live with them, which she accepts. The apartment her grandmother left was too expensive for her to continue living in. The rent was free in exchange for soupy rice, and the stress of living with an elderly person was lifted. Mikage's ex, Sotaro, calls and informs her that Yuichi's girlfriend slapped him due to her living with him. One of the many things I love about goodreads is that a person is able to see what other “friends” think about a novel before committing oneself to reading it. I would have never read KITCHEN had I not seen that Mariel, Oriana, and Jason Pettus, three of my friends, all thought highly of this slim book. She graduated from Nihon University's Art College, majoring in Literature. During that time, she took the pseudonym "Banana" after her love of banana flowers, a name she recognizes as both "cute" and "purposefully androgynous."

Banana creates a hybrid first-person narrator. These people play two roles: following the lives outside and observing themselves. “I” compels the readers by being frank with both themselves and their surroundings. Therefore, this narrative always creates credibility and consistency in Banana’s fiction and urges audiences to look at things from different perspectives. A certain tension is created in narrative parts: “The faint colors of his form, even the heat of the tears running down my cheeks: I desperately struggled to memorize it all. The arching lines described by his arm remained, like an afterimage, suspended in the air” (Banana, 1993, p. 146). The small happiness of Tsugumi’s little family is similar to a kitchen that is always unstable. The moments they spend together consistently bear a likelihood of uncertainty and farewell. Even the father, who only meets his daughter, offers lessons that sometimes show his uncertain ego or feelings about the past. The daughter’s ego, in parallel with the “I” of the narrator, has reflected a sweet paternal love while sketching the uncertain perspective of unpredictable things in the future. Banana’s works, even though minimalist in the train of thought, are always warm and humane. Wong writes, “She is hence recognized as a ‘Healing-Kei’ writer—one who brings positivity, love, and warmth to readers” (Wong, 2016). Maybe this is the way Banana hopes her readers practice creating happiness for themselves and society.Another: "Why do I love everything that has to do with kitchens so much?... a kitchen represents some distant longing engraved on my soul." Does anyone think like that? (And it doesn't answer the question anyway.) No matter what, I want to continue living with the awareness that I will die. Without that, I am not alive. That is what makes the life I have now possible.